It's A Wonderful Life
by Lin M
Summary: Mark Greene's remake of the film.


IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (DVD region 2): serial number (10 x Nth power) 1-84357-035-1 

GREENE, MARK (1964-2002)

Mark Greene's last earthly memory was lying tranquilly in his bed in Hawaii, no longer mesmerised by the circling fan above him. His sweet wife sat by his side, lifted his still warm hand and held it pressed to her lips for a moment that encompassed an eternity. Down there on the beach, above the strand line in the silver sand, both his daughters played, both happy, both adored and in one case, fixed. 

He was at peace, loved, and sure he was going into the light.

No, the last moments of his life were not unpleasant.

After that ... 

Mark stumbled through distinctly unpearly doors into a large atrium. Far, far above was a glass roof, down through which shone a summer midday sun. Around the sides were glass walls, barely visible behind the originals of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. From Mark's viewpoint, there was no way to tell how large the rest of the place was. 

A marble floor stretched far ahead to a fountain that jetted a hundred feet in the air and made the atmosphere bearable. It was fed by, or fed into, a narrow but deep channel that crossed the atrium.

An old fat bored guy in tacky corporate workwear and a nametag saying **_Stan_** beckoned him over to Reception. His companion **_Hilda_** simpered up at him and continued to stir her cup of tea, sticking her pinkie out in exaggerated refinement.

"Name?" grunted **_Stan_**.

"Mark. Mark Greene. Dr", said Mark helpfully. He gazed around. It was impressive, but really not what he had been led to expect. As far as he could tell, no religious sect believed the afterlife looked like a very up-market office.

Old fat bored **_Stan _**riffled through the appointments book, and punched a number into a hands-free telephone. "Damien? Your 6.04's here." He went back to studying the racing form.

"Let me take you to the waiting room", said a thin woman name-tagged **_Sharon _**who had just materialised at Mark's side. She grasped his elbow and marched him over the channel of flowing water into a smart cubicle behind the glass wall. It was perfect: warm from the sun, cool from the plants and the fountain, whose noise was muted by the greenery into a relaxing murmur.

"Tea or coffee, and before you say coffee, we've only got instant."

"Then I'll have the tea", said Mark, eager to be polite. "Please." He sat in one of the chairs, the exquisitely comfortable chairs, arranged around a low table. 

She returned almost at once to plonk a cup in front of him. "If you don't like sugar, don't stir it" she warned him, and left.

Mark had hardly dared try the tea before a young man in a pin-stripe suit poked his head round the door. 

"You must be Mark Greene, so pleased to meet you," he beamed. "I'm Damien, your guide." He tried not to drop a file and a DVD as he shuffled them so he could shake hands. "Sorry sorrysorry, nerves. Sorry to keep you waiting for your Viewing. Shall we go straight up?"

"Viewing?" asked Mark.

"Oh dear", said Damien. "You didn't know?"

"Was I supposed to?"

"Well - people usually have some idea. Life flashing before their eyes before they die and all that."

Mark smiled wanly. "Mine didn't."

His guide nodded. "That's because it doesn't." He held up the DVD. "It flashes before your eyes after you've died, in a manner of speaking, and then ... ah, look, shall we go?"

Propelled by a gentle push in the back from his guide, a dazed Mark shambled into a nearby lift. The view out of its glass windows took in the whole atrium. There were innumerable buttons for the mansion's many floors, seen and unseen. Its glass doors swished shut, Mozart played, and the lift began its ascent.

Mark Greene leaned on the handrail. If he craned his neck upwards, he saw the jetstream speeding curro-nimbus clouds through the stratosphere; if he craned his neck downwards, he could see darkness broken by a tongue of blood-red magma.

Five floors up, the lift stopped and in stepped an exquisitely groomed thirty-something woman, nodding as she listened to her cell phone. She nodded in recognition to Mark's guide, but didn't break off her conversation. Mark tried not to listen, but Nature and her class had given her a voice that would carry across the hunting field. Besides, Elizabeth had got him used to the accent. There was no way he could tune her out if he tried.

"Yes ... yes ... well, it is unfortunate ... very ... total SNAFU, couldn't agree more ... look, nobody's going to blame you, you can't be everywhere at once ... OK,**_ technically _**you can be everywhere at once... They **_are_** blaming you ... Oh bloody hell, Geoffrey, calm down. " 

Mark mouthed "**_Geoffrey?_**" at his guide, who pointed discreetly upward.

"They always blame you. They always have and they always will. .... Bollocks. It's part of your job. Pull yourselves together", she said sharply as she ended the call. 

Mark's guide leaned forward and said in a significant tone "Can I introduce you to Mark Greene."

"Delighted to meet you. I'm Caroline" she said, extending a perfectly manicured hand. "I'm His PA. I've heard so much about you."

"About me, huh", said Mark as they shook hands. He was pleased despite himself: not a sparrow falls, and all that.

"Oh yes. Geoffrey sent a memo round last week. Apparently poor Kerry finds your death most distressing." 

Mark gaped at her as the lift continued its relentless progress. "She finds my ... Poor Kerry ... distressing .... You mean Kerry **_Weaver_**?"

They both nodded enthusiastically. 

"The same Kerry Weaver from County where I worked?" asked Mark in disbelief.

"That must have been amazing, to work for one of them" said his guide with naked envy. 

"Especially with the first woman to be one", said Caroline, unable to keep the admiration out of her voice. 

"First what one?" demanded Mark, bewildered and angry that the afterlife was diverting its attention to his arch-nemesis but evidently had no plans to summon her.

"A _lamed wufnik_" they proclaimed. His blank expression as he heard the four strange syllables wiped the happy expressions off their faces. 

His guide was too embarrassed to look him in the face, and stared at the mosaic kaleidoscoping on the floor. Caroline laid a decidedly cool hand on his arm. "I suppose being the son of an agnostic Jew you never had a chance to encounter the mystic tradition" she consoled him. 

"What are you talking about?" asked Mark, angrily. Caroline glanced sharply at his guide, who smartly picked up his cue. 

"The _lamed wufkniks_ are the thirty-six perfectly just men on earth whose mission is to justify the world before God. They are, without knowing it, the secret pillars of the universe. Were it not for them, God would annihilate the whole of mankind. Unawares, they are your saviours", recited his guide. Caroline cleared her throat loudly. "Well, thirty -five perfectly just men and one perfectly just woman now, obviously." 

The elevator doors opened. "I think this is your floor, for the viewing rooms", prompted Caroline. "Goodbye Mr Greene. I can't tell you what a thrill it is to have met someone who worked for her." 

Room 101 had a Viewing screen the size of the wall. His guide gestured him to sit down in an all-enveloping leather recliner and klutzed around with the DVD. Mark was too unsettled by the revelation about Kerry Weaver to accept the popcorn his guide offered him, and besides, he wondered whether it might not have been some sort of test. Or temptation.

That brought an unsettling query to the top of his mind. He turned to Damien. 

"What did you mean my life flashes before my eyes 'in a manner of speaking, and then ...'?"

Damien stood up straight. "I'm glad you've asked that" he lied. "It's rather complicated but ... you know that old film, "It's A Wonderful Life"?"

Mark groaned inwardly. He'd lost count of the times he'd had to watch that pile of hokum over the Christmas Holidays. "I know it", he said.

"Of course, of course. You are American, after all. I understand your networks show it every public holiday. This DVD is just like that film - in a way, because, let's face it, you are already dead and it's a bit pointless for you to decide whether you commit suicide or not. On the other hand, it will determine your, ah, next destination. So, just like the angel figure in the film, I will show you your life as it would have been without you in it. That reveals whether your life touched people for better or worse. Then .."

"Then I get to decide where I go next?" grinned Mark. "Like the guy decided not to kill himself?"

"Dear me no", said Damien, shocked. "You have already decided. Every decision you made in your life has decided that. We look at your life in the round. By the time we reach the end, we will know what your destination is to be. Heaven or Hell, saved or damned, QED. Are you sure you won't have some popcorn?" He rattled the carton at Mark. "It is awfully good."

Mark was too stunned to do more than shake his head, so Damien settled down to with the whole carton to himself, and pressed ENTER. 

Mark could not quite make sense of what he was seeing in the first chapter of the DVD. It was sea. Just sea. The surface of the sea. Followed by more sea, interspersed with a sprinkling of ocean, a short marine sequence and a couple of small billows. 

His father spoke often of the calming effect of the sea but right now the sight of the briny deep was bringing Mark out in a muck sweat of apprehension. Was he supposed to solve a riddle or learn some metaphysical lesson? Was this endless watery vista supposed to represent the waters of life? Of creation? How far back did his life count as beginning? Was he seeing the waters of his mother's womb? 

Mark was a doctor but that made him feel as sick as chemo ever did.

Finally the camera - or his viewpoint - switched and in the middle of the vast ocean he saw a fleet of US Navy ships. The camera began a slow zoom onto an aircraft carrier. Mark was relieved. That meant this was about him and his father. It wasn't a metaphysical guessing game in disguise. 

The zoom continued. As soon as little human figures on the bridge became distinct, he recognised one of them was his father. 

Close-up his father looked a different man from the way Mark remembered him. His father looked to be in his late forties, putting the scene twenty years before he died, maybe more. So this could be a scene from Mark's teenage years, if only Mark had ever been on board one of the ships his father had served on. 

Mark shifted in his chair to ask Damien more about the scene, but his guide held up his left forefinger to his lips to hush him. _O-K,_ Mark told himself, _it's not like I've lost my mind; I can work this out._

The camera lingered on his father; in contrast the other figures appeared a little indistinct. Mark had lost count of the number of times he'd seen his father in some uniform - though he didn't remember him having that many medals - he'd seen him tanned like mahogany every summer, and he'd certainly seen that set to his father's jaw when they had one of their innumerable fights about the length of Mark's hair. 

Mark was running out of clues. He couldn't tell what his father was doing, exactly, on the bridge of the aircraft carrier. As far as Mark could tell, his father was just standing there, glancing around him while the other officers hovered at some distance from him and did - stuff. Naval stuff. Steering, charts, radio, sonar, radar, whatever. It was profoundly dull to Mark, who'd once fallen asleep during _Under Siege. _

However, Mark belatedly began to realise that it wasn't dull to his father, but infinitely satisfying. Mark had never seen his father so focussed, so calm, so alert, even when he had taken for that ride on Lake Michigan when he was dying. _Poor Dad, _thought Mark, _he has no idea_. 

Mark had once seen his reflection as he worked on a trauma, and in that moment he recognised something of his own powers of concentration in his father. His moment of insight was broken by a junior officer crashing through a door.. 

"Admiral Greene sir. Sir, the intercepts have been decoded and the_ USS Surprise- _"

"Red Flagship, son", corrected David Greene. 

"Sir. Red Flagship is making for the Gulf and their subs are ordered to attack us. They broke off from Red Fleet a hour ago."

David Greene grinned with a fierce joy as he ordered his own fleet into the biggest live fire exercise NATO had ever mounted.

The screen faded to black. 

The next scene followed immediately. It was much shorter, but just as disquieting. A sunny afternoon in - well, it looked like a suburb of Denver as the camera panned in. He'd only been there once on a stop-over, but he thought he recognised the flight route over the mountains from San Diego.

This didn't make much sense either, because Mark knew his parents had never lived in Denver: they'd always lived on the coast. But for whatever reason, in this alternate universe, his parents were living in Denver. 

The camera swooped into a large chaotic house, stopping in the living room just as his mother walked in. She paused before the window, and looked our across the road. Three - no, four - removal guys were loading up a large van. 

Anger rose in Mark. His mother had always hated moving, but they'd always had to move because of his father's career. Always his father's career. He remembered just how isolated it had made his mother, just how miserable it had made him. Why was he being shown this ugly memory? Why couldn't he just see his mother again?

He hardly daring to breathe as he watched his mother framed in the window. Her profile was visible, just, but he longed for her to turn her head again so he could see her face to face. He loved her enough to know she was happy and smiling even though she stood with her back to him. 

That was odd, because she hated moving. Maybe she was saying goodbye to some neighbours she hated, because this sure wasn't theirs. Far too lived-in, far too worn, pictures of unknown children all over the walls and - the clincher - no Hummels. Or maybe his father had cajoled her again into believing that this time it would be different, that this time it would work out. 

Some man whom Mark had never seen before came out of the kitchen and draped an arm over his mother's shoulder like he had every right. Even as Mark gaped, his mother sighed with contentment. 

"Poor things," she said to the strange man. "I can remember the day they moved into that house after they were married. Now look at them. Moving out already. Getting divorced." She shook her head. "Poor silly kids."

"It's been, what, five years?" asked the man whose voice Mark did not recognise and whose face he could not see.

"Four", his mother corrected him. "It would have been five in September."

"Four, five, what's the difference?" said the stranger. "No time at all." 

"No?" laughed Ruth. "When we'd been married four years I felt like we'd been together for a thousand." She slipped her arm round his waist. "In a good way." 

The stranger hugged her again. "It's all been good."

That time, Mark couldn't contain himself when the screen faded to black. He jumped up and yelled at Damien. "What the hell is this? I thought you were showing me my life! Why are you doing this to me? When did my parents divorce? What happened to me?" 

Damien hit PAUSE. He held up his hands to calm Mark. "Remember the film. This is what life would have been like for everyone who knew you IF you had never been born."

Mark stared at him. "But ... but ... my parents... What happened to Mom and Dad? When did they divorce? Why's Mom in Denver and who is that guy with his paws all over her?"

Damien consulted the file. "Her husband, or, her husband in this version of her life. His name's irrelevant. To you. Your parents, well, they never divorced because they never got married. In this version. In your life as you lived it, they had to get married because your mother conceived you out of wedlock and that was what people did in those days. A shotgun wedding. So: you don't exist, they don't have to get married to each other. Therefore their lives are free to unfold along very different paths. That's why your father never had to transfer to shore duty when you were bullied at school, so he made Admiral." 

Mark laughed bitterly. "So you're telling me that if I never existed, my parents' lives would have been better?" 

Damien replied softly, "You might think that; I couldn't possibly comment." He pressed PLAY.

Mark slumped in his seat, furious at getting no real answers from Damien. His guide. Who was the guy anyway? Guide to what? He hadn't guided Mark through what he was seeing at all. A thought struck Mark: maybe Damien had been his guide during life. Mark's anger grew. Some guardian angel he'd been. Mark had never seen or felt his presence. There was a worse possibility. Maybe Damien was his tormentor, a devil. 

Either way, he realised he'd better not offend the guy. He chewed his lip and tried not too look too sulky he realised the DVD had moved to its next chapter before he'd had chance to work out what period of his life he was about to visit.

This time Mark had no trouble with the location. It was Cook County General. The ER. His ER. Despite himself, despite the strange situation, he felt excited and relieved as the camera moved past Doc Magoo's. He'd thought he was done with the place. He thought he'd never see it again. It was only when the camera began to zoom through the ambulance bay the doors that he acknowledged, fully, just how much he'd missed the place, and how excited he was to return. When the camera glided through the doors he felt like he'd come home, come full circle.

Over the sound of Damien's chain-munching, Mark tried to orient himself. When was this happening? When he was a resident? An attending? Was there something special about this day? 

He smiled as the younger Haleh and Lydia came into and passed out of shot. Good to see them again, but since they'd always been there, they didn't help him pin down when this was happening. If he could just see which point they'd reached in the ever-changing cycle of desk clerks, that might give him the year.

But before that could happen, the doors crashed open and a distraught man in winter clothes rushed in, frantically calling out for help. A very young Carter followed the man out into the ambulance bay, where his wife had collapsed as he was driving her home from the ER.

Mark recognised Jodi O'Brien's face the instant he saw it. For years it had haunted his dreams, as had Sean's cry of despair as Mark broke the news that his wife was dead. The case had chilled him to the bone. He'd done his best and yet he'd still made small incremental mistakes that had killed the woman. Sure, her son had lived: but his mother should have been alive to see him grow up. 

For years that series of mistakes had dogged Mark, humbling him, haunting him, making him doubt himself and his judgement. And now Jodi O'Brien , who'd suffered horribly and needlessly under his care as an experienced physician, was about to be subject to the care of a surgical student. 

There was nothing Mark could do to alter events in the alternate universe in which the O'Briens now lived, yet he had to watch it through to the end. He watched a panicked Carter call for a gurney and nurses and get Jodi inside. Mark sighed with relief. Carter hadn't killed her yet. But there was no way he could deal with this case even with the help of the nurses. 

Thankfully Haleh had realised this and gone to get a resident. Mark was stunned and relieved to see Susan Lewis appear. Of course Susan was competent enough to diagnose the eclampsia - but she was going to be even less use to Jodi than he had been. She would make no impression on Janet Coburn or her resident Drake. As Mark's junior by two years she simply lacked the experience to induce the baby in the ER - or to perform that ghastly improvised C-section. A chill ran up Mark's spine. Surely Carter wasn't going to attempt it? 

Mark's skin started to crawl. He could see only one thing happening. In this alternate universe, Jodi and her baby son were both going to die. It was only a question of time, and how much they suffered. He gripped the arms of the chair tight. He was sweating. How could he be expected to sit in comfort and watch that? He dug his fingers deeper into the arms of the chair, and screwed his eyes tight shut. He didn't care what Damien thought. He just couldn't watch his patients dying like it was _Attack of the Killer Tomatoes_.

Susan Lewis making a phone call at the Admit Desk snapped Mark back to alertness. She was apologising - Mark groaned - actually apologising to David Morgenstern. 

"I know it's your last day, but you are still ER Chief for another three and a half hours. Technically. We need your help. Or I wouldn't be disturbing you now. I have an OB patient, 32 weeks with eclampsia. She needs to deliver tonight. OB say they're busy ." Susan listened. "Yeah, every time. You noticed that too, huh. I don't want to leave the patient but I will go up there and strongarm OB if I have to. Please, please persuade Janet Coburn down here before half past nine or Transport might as well take her straight down to Dr Upton. Thank you. _Thank_ you."

Susan was in the middle of reassuring the O'Briens that everything was going to be alright when Janet Coburn stalked in. Usually her face wore an expression that could sour milk at a hundred paces: tonight, no dairy produce was safe this side of the Rockies. 

Not that the O'Briens noticed or cared as Janet Coburn wheeled Jodi up to the safety of OB to deliver her son. 

Mark felt weary, cold and lost. He was pleased that Jodi was going to live - of course he was, of course - but this wasn't how he remembered things happening. Familiar emotions swirled round inside him. How could things turn out this way? How come Susan had been able to get OB to take notice? He'd used all his experience and judgement and Susan had just called Morgernstern. The guy must have been in Harvard by now. _Technically_ still Chief of the ER. 

None of this felt right to Mark, not at all, not one thing. 

Damien mentally shrugged, and stood up to remove his suit jacket and loosen his tie before he moved on to the next chapter.

While the screen was blank, Mark began to breathe more naturally. He wasn't going to ask himself how he was dead and breathing at the same time. 

It looked like they'd completely skipped over high school. He didn't mind. The only things that he ever got out of high school were grades good enough to go to med school and his first wife Jen. Not even Mark could get sentimental over grades and he was over Jen. Just as she was over him. Maybe if her life had taken a different course, away from law, she wouldn't have been such a cold bitch. He half-smiled as he wondered what that version of Jen could possibly be like. Talk about alternate universes. 

At Union Station the train for Phoenix was boarding. Susan Lewis tipped the porter who'd carried every last one of her suitcases onboard and turned back to say goodbye. Although her companion stood with their back to Mark, there was no mistaking that red hair. Or the crutch. Mark cursed. Inwardly, because of Damien.

Susan Lewis tried to smile as she looked at Kerry Weaver. Mark slid to the edge of his seat. So Weaver was running Susan out of town on a rail. That didn't surprise him at all. One of the perfectly just and secret pillar of the universe, not. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd come between them, the amount of interpreting he'd had to do. Why neither of them had been able to communicate directly and honestly with the other, was beyond his power to guess. 

Mark was only surprised that without his presence it had taken Weaver till 1996 to force Susan out as part of her Machiavellian scheme to rule the ER. The weekend before Thanksgiving too. What a bitch. 

"It's only for a couple of months", said Susan quietly gently. "We'll get through this."

Kerry nodded. "You should board," she snuffled pathetically. "It'll be leaving in three minutes."

"Leaving two and a half to say goodbye to you" said Susan, gently. 

Kerry tried to smile. "You already have."

"Properly", said Susan. 

"Susan ..." begged Kerry, her voice cracking, "not here. Please. I can't -"

"Aw c'mere" said Susan and enveloped Kerry in a full-body bear hug, apparently deaf to Kerry's muffled squeaks of protest. 

After two and a quarter minutes she released Kerry, who had stopped protesting about the same time she started returning the hug. But Kerry did not release Susan, not quite. Susan bent down to murmur something in Kerry's ear, and though Mark grabbed the remote and turned the volume up full blast, only the last word was audible. 

"....Bye" said Susan. Mark stared at the screen. Was Kerry blushing? 

Mark's companion cheerfully hit PAUSE as he jumped up to make more popcorn.

Mark would have preferred a beer. There were no beers. There was just popcorn. Screw that. Mark _needed_ a beer. 

This wasn't how he remembered things at all. 

"Ready?" asked his guide. Mark braced himself and nodded. His companion shrugged and pressed PLAY. 

This time the scene began in a cheap motel room somewhere where the fiery heat of the day had not yet died down, although it was getting dark. It took a moment for Mark to recognise the motel where he'd stayed with Doug Ross on their road-trip.

And sure enough, there was Doug Ross lying on the bed, swigging from a bottle of beer. Trust Doug to be lucky enough to find one. Mark's spirits rose immediately. "Where've you been old buddy?" he wondered. Now he came to think of it, he was amazed that the film of his life had left out his former best friend. Oh sure, Doug was a screw-up, but somehow seeing him always made Mark feel better, appreciate the quality of his own life more. 

Except on that trip out to Barstow. Doug had been on his case the whole time, bugging him about how he didn't appreciate his own family enough, was on some weird self-pity kick. OK, the guy was grieving, he understood that, and in his grief he'd lashed out. Grieving for his deadbeat dad who'd been a drunken charmer until he killed himself. Over-identify much, buddy? 

But whether Doug meant to or not, he'd crossed a line when he'd turned on Mark. Now Mark came to think about it, they'd never been as close after the trip as they had before. And it wasn't all down to Doug trying on commitment for size with Carol. 

Maybe what he was going to see would explain. If not, well, the memory would be sweet.

On-screen, Doug swigged from his beer, turned his head towards the bathroom and called, "Are you ever coming out? You've been washing your hair for the last hour." 

"Yeah well, there's a lot to wash" said Carol, as she put her hair up in a towel and sprawled beside him. He fixed the pillows behind her back. 

"Ready?", he asked nervously.

She took Doug's hand. "You could have started without me", she said.

"Since when do I ever start anything without you?" he asked with a barely decent smile. 

Carol grinned at him "Since never". She opened a bottle of water. "You're going to have to talk me through who all these people are, Doug, all your family I've never met."

Doug grinned as he rolled over onto his front. "There'll be a test" he warned her. 

"Doug" protested Carol.

"And if you fail the test", he said as he embraced her, "there'll be a forfeit." 

" I'm not scared," flirted Carol.

"You should be," he teased.

"I don't scare easily", she reminded him, half-trying to hang on to some shred of dignity as he kissed her neck.

Doug glanced up. "That's true", he conceded. "You married me."

"Exactly", said Carol. She nudged him in the ribs. "Film now, forfeit later."

For over an hour Doug and Carol lay on the bed, hand in hand, watching slightly out of focus home movies of Doug Ross as a baby and small child, and Ray Ross as a loving and devoted father. 

Doug sat on the end of the bed as their little screen turned white. Carol knelt behind him, put her arms round a silent Doug and hugged him. At her touch, he instinctively leaned back.

"Now I see where you learned to be such a good father", whispered Carol into her husband's ear. 

It made no sense. Nothing about this made any sense. He'd done his best to help Doug grow up, give him the benefit of his perspective on life, stop Doug clowning and fooling his life away as a maverick. Because he loved Doug. He wasn't too embarrassed to admit it. Doug was like the tearaway little brother he'd never had. And he was the older brother. How had his screw-up younger brother grown up without Mark to guide him? Mark had always reached out to him, wanted to help him, be a role model, even though he never really understood why Doug hadn't wanted the same things he had. 

Hell, Doug had resented his help towards the end of his time in Chicago. Doug couldn't even commit to a friendship with his best buddy, but take his best buddy, his older brother, out of the picture, and there Doug was, happily married to Carol with at least one kid. 

Mark felt his world was turning upside down. At this rate, Doug probably **_liked_** Weaver. Might have even dragged her down into his secret love nest if he hadn't been married to Carol. 

He tried to get a grip. He told himself he was watching a fiction, and it was unreasonable for people to spend all their lives moping because he wasn't around. Still, if he was honest with himself, it hurt that nobody missed him. Even if they didn't know he hadn't been born. Yet it was hard to feel he was watching a fiction when it felt so real. He wondered whether he was supposed to be learning from watching his life with him taken out, and if he was, what the lesson was supposed to be. 

Forgiveness? Tolerance? Understanding? 

How cruel it was to watch people you loved go about their lives and not know you'd existed?

Cosmic indifference? Transcendence? 

Where you'd gone wrong?

He was too confused, too overwhelmed to make any sense of it.

So Mark gave in and tried some popcorn. Maybe it would give him a blood-sugar high, or maybe it was drugged with something. Mark didn't much care which. If he had to sit through a re-run of his life - rather, a re-run of the alternate universe where his life hadn't existed - he needed something to take the edge off, and an ice-cold beer was apparently not an option. More's the pity. 

Still, he took care to be polite to Damien as the young man handed him his very own bucket of popcorn. With a name like that, you couldn't be too careful. Mark sat back, wondering what fresh onscreen pain was going to ambush him next. 

He didn't have long to wait. Back in the ER. Mark wondered whether the DVD of Mark's So-Called Life would ever acknowledge that he had had friends and interests outside the hospital, that he had been a person and not only a doctor. His life hadn't been a only blur of patients and gomers and complicated relationships with the hospital staff. 

Take the next chapter, Mark groused to himself. Here he was being shown some scene in the ER when it was clearly Valentine's Day because someone went a little overboard with the hearts that decorated the Admit area. As if what went on in the ER was the most important thing on Valentine's Day. He prided himself on making a special effort for Valentine's if he was dating: exotic flowers, a thoughtful gift, and taking his girlfriend out for a date. Even if it was a double date - him and Elizabeth, his father and Elizabeth's mother. 

Mark had a very clear picture of that double-date, and as the memory came back to him, he shuddered. For some reason, the horror of singing off-key at that karaoke bar always came first, and blended seamlessly into the carnage that ensued. He'd never been able to hear "Piano Man" again without an instant flashback to working on a half-dead Lucy Knight.

Mark took a deep breath and steeled himself to watch, just as he'd learned to steel himself for the gamma knife and chemotherapy. 

It was exquisitely painful to see the not yet butchered Lucy Knight at the Admit Desk, talking to Randi and Amira about arranging a head CT for Paul Sobriki. Mark's heart pounded. He wanted to yell at her to get out, to take care of herself, that Sobriki was dangerous, and yet he knew it was pointless. Even if he screamed himself hoarse at the screen, in little under an hour Lucy was going to be lying in Curtain Three in a pool of her own blood from stab wounds. Left abdomen, chest and neck; and right abdomen. Until then, she stood among the living at the desk, calmly making arrangements to treat her murderer. 

A young man in his early twenties came in and practically grabbed hold of Amira, asking whether a friend of his had been brought in. A friend named Paul Sobriki. The name caught Lucy's attention.

"He's my patient. Are you a relative?"

"No", admitted the young man. "I'm at law school with him. Just a friend. I was just worried about him."

Lucy eyed him speculatively. "Any reason in particular?" 

"Not really."

"But you thought he might need treatment", Lucy pointed out. 

"Yeah, but -"

"Has he said anything to you in the last couple of days?" asked Lucy. "Complained of a fever, headache, nausea?"

"No ... not the last few days. Nothing like that. It's more ... look, he's been acting kinda weird for the last couple of months. He's been driving Samantha crazy. His wife. But he is here, right?"

"Weird how?" asked Lucy.

"He's been wearing the same clothes, picking fights with people, even Samantha. She doesn't know I'm here. Probably just stress, he's probably not handling the stress well. Paul is going to be OK?" 

"It might be stress. That can be very destructive if you don't handle it. You were right to go looking for him. Could you take a seat in chairs, please? I'll be right back", said Lucy. 

Lucy stepped over to the other side of the Admit Desk, where Randi was no longer explaining that Bare Butt Booty Oil was almost certainly not for human consumption, even today. 

"Could you get me Dr Lewis", Lucy asked "My patient needs a Psych consult and I need some leverage."

Randi shook her head. "She's not in today, it's Valentine's."

Lucy sighed. "So no Weaver either, great. Carter vs Psych, no contest." 

"Oh, Weaver's in, guy from an MVA, thataway", said Randi as she pounced on another phone. "ER."

Lucy reached Weaver in the hall, as she finished explaining to Chen and Malucci that they should have asked the patient what treatment he wanted for his superior vena cava syndrome, so they were to go back in and discuss the options with him, and possibly even learn something from their patient **_Dr_** Hudson. Lucy cursed Malucci and Chen for messing with Weaver's mood when she needed to ask a favour. 

Here goes nothing, thought Lucy, but asked anyway. "Dr Weaver, you got a moment?" She outlined Sobriki's symptoms and background as they walked briskly back to the Admit Desk. Their conversation got so heated around the necessity of proper analgesia for painful diagnostic procedures that they nearly walked straight into two men confronting each other in the hallway.

"Because I was worried about you, so was Samantha", explained Paul's friend. But Paul was having none of it.

"What is it you people want from me?" he raged, clearly on the edge.

"We just wanted to make sure you were OK, Paul", said his friend, looking hurt and puzzled.

"How do you know my name?" demanded Paul. 

"Hey man", said his friend, uneasily, "take it easy ..."

"Who are you? Why are you following me around?" whined Sobriki. He snatched his arm away as his friend reached out to him. "Don't touch me!"

There was an undertone of violence to his tone that both the doctors recognised and neither liked. It might be too late already. Weaver laid her left hand on Lucy's arm and drew her back. She said, "I'll get Psysch, you get security. Go."

As Paul Sobriki and his friend argued, Weaver snuck into an empty trauma room and used its phone to call Psych. In an eerily flat tone like the end of the world, she told Carl de Raad, "If you want my evidence to even give you the benefit of the doubt the next time your Department gets sued, get down to the ER now."

Lucy called Security as ordered, and on her own initiative told Malik to get Luka in case Sobriki and his friend came to blows first. Fortunately Malik had been involved in treating Sobriki earlier, and could at least tell him and his freind apart. 

As Lucy and Weaver began a very cautious second approach, Paul screamed at his friend, "Get away from me! I won't let you do it! You're not gonna take them!", and took a swing at him. 

His poor well-meaning friend took the blow square on the side of his head and collapsed. Malik and Luka jumped on the raving Sobriki before he'd even recovered his balance to run out. The struggle was short but nasty, and very, very loud. Weaver got knocked over and somebody's boot caught Lucy on the right kneecap as she tried to reach Paul's friend. De Raad slobbed out of the elevator just in time to restrain Sobriki and have Security help him up to Psych.

Carter reached them just as Paul's friend was coming round. Abby and Haleh helped him get their new patient onto a gurney, which they rolled into the now vacant Curtain Three. Malik stretched out a hand so Lucy could haul herself to her feet.

"Damn", he said as he caught sight of his fingernails. "And I just got a manicure yesterday."

Luka bent and lifted Kerry to her feet despite her protests. He knew she was OK, he just didn't look forward to breaking the news that her crutch was DOA.

Weaver wrote off her crutch with good grace. It was the cake for the staff party in the lounge that she obsessed over.

"Blue cake", she fretted. "Whoever heard of blue cake."

Randi shrugged. "So it's a first, so sue me."

Weaver glared at the slice on her plate. "It doesn't even taste blue."

"Gimme a break", begged Randi. 

"Blue's got a taste?" asked Haleh, who privately wished Weaver had done her fried chicken again, but apparently that needed something special like a power cut, and this was only an ordinary day in the ER.

Weaver shrugged, and decided, "Minty. You know, like spearmint."

"Mouthwash flavoured cake? I don't think so", said Randi. 

The screen faded to black but Mark kept staring at it anyway. Why had he had to watch that terrible day, that had killed Lucy and nearly destroyed Carter, played out as if it was an ordinary day? That had been one of the biggest days in his life, in the ER's life, a day that changed everybody's world. Yet he'd just seen it replayed as if it didn't matter, unless you were Paul Sobriki or his wife. He struggled to reconcile what his heart told him about Lucy and her real death in his real world, and what his head told him about this Lucy and her life onscreen. Which was the truth? Which was false? Could they both be real? Mark briefly contemplated that possibility, and decided "No!" 

"No what?" asked Damien.

Mark was embarrassed to discover he'd spoken aloud. Automatically he said, "Nothing." Then he realised that he might be missing a vital piece of information, a clue that would help him realise what was going on - and how to fix it.

"I meant ... I guess I was arguing with myself", Mark admitted, sheepishly. "The way it really happened -"

"The way you remember it?" asked Damien.

"Yeah. Lucy died. She really died. Sobriki murdered her..."

"With the knife for the cake", confirmed Damien, glancing at his file.

Mark nodded, and warmed to his topic. "Then he stabbed Carter. We didn't find them for a couple of hours -"

"_We_", murmured Damien.

" - and Sobriki was long gone by then. We worked so hard on Lucy, Elizabeth did everything she knew how, and we still couldn't save her." He looked over at Damien. "You have no idea how much it hurt my wife, all of us, no idea at all, and you think it's some joke to replay it to me now?"

"No", said Damien. "This is not a joke."

Mark ignored him. "Because Lucy's dead and Carter nearly died!" yelled Mark. "That's real! That's reality! That's what really happened! This -" he waved his arm at the screen wildly, "this is not real. You've made it up to torment me. It never happened like that. Nothing happened the way you say. You hear me? Nothing. Forget all this alternate universe crap, just forget it. I know it's not the truth, you know it's not the truth and I know you know it's not the truth."

"What is truth?" mused Damien as Mark paused to draw breath. Mark ignored him.

"Just tell me which version of my life is the real one. The version I remember or the version in this film?"

"Yes", said Damien.

Mark's previous regrets that he had not seen enough of his private life - his wives and daughters - was wiped out with a quick montage of brief scenes that dissolved into one another. Jen meeting some guy in law school. Jen marrying some other guy from law school . Elizabeth making it to deliver her conference paper at the hotel, instead of tangoing with him at the wedding reception they'd crashed. A baby Rachel who grew up fast, looked only slightly different and was so obsessed with soccer, and Mia Hamm in particular, that she treated her body like a temple, forswearing even Coke. Elizabeth dating a guy from that conference Elizabeth two-timing him with some black guy, in advertising. Jen and her husband and young Rachel opening up to each other in family therapy as they divorced. Elizabeth sitting on the edge of her bath looking at the positive result from a home pregnancy kit, and saying "Oh _bugger_." 

Exactly the sort of thing a man could see too much of, when you got down to it.

Still more scenes of the ER. Mark had never got this tired of County, not even when he'd been on for 36 hours straight as an intern. He grudgingly conceded he had spent the better part of his adult life there, so it was representative. But had they been the defining moments of his life? Mark didn't think so. 

It was the start of summer. A sticky, grimy, humid day in an ER where the air conditioning seldom worked, and never effectively. 

The camera showed an empty lounge. If anything, the lounge was even more depressing without exhausted doctors slumped over evil coffee while they tried to complete their paper work on the wrong side of midnight. Years ago they'd had TV chatter to keep them company, but it had long since been stolen. 

The establishing shot went on a little too long, then the door swung open. In came Adele Newman, her arms folded, Luka Kovac glowering, and Kim Legaspi clasping a clipboard to her bosom tighter than Cleopatra ever held an asp. 

By way of coda, Haleh stuck her head round the door. "Death kit's here" she announced.

Luka nodded stiffly. "Thanks." Kim Legaspi stalked over to stand with her back to the lockers. Luka slumped on the ancient couch, Adele paced up and down and finally rounded on the two doctors. 

"What the hell were you two thinking?" she accused them. "How could you let him take his son home to do that to him? Again."

"We didn't know he was going to hurt his son", said Luka very quietly.

"We didn't _know_ he'd been beaten before", seethed Legaspi. 

Adele stopped wearing out the carpet. "Didn't _know_? With all the signs, the, the burn on his hand -"

"Could have been an accident", said Luka unhappily as he dropped his head in his hands. Legaspi glared at Adele. 

"Well it wasn't." Adele faced Legaspi and resumed counting symptoms, ticking them off on her fingers. "The aggression, the bruise behind his ear ..."

"He said he got into a fight at school", said Legaspi.

"A fight", repeated Adele scornfully. 

Legaspi stared down at her icily. "His neighbour said he got into a lot of fights."

"His neighbour. The _neighbour_ brings him in, instead of his father and that doesn't clue you in? What about his broken wrist?"

Luka groaned inwardly. He'd called up Ben Fossen's old records, and had wondered whether the child had been abused. Legaspi sighed. "You know, Adele, kids do get into fights. Sometimes they even break bones."

"And sometimes they get abused by their parents." Adele squared up to the psychiatrist. "He had all the classic signs of child abuse -"

"None of them definitive", pointed out Legaspi, getting irritated in her turn. 

"The physical injuries, the acting out ... What more did you need?" Adele was in Kim's face by now. The psychiatrist didn't flinch.

"All of them consistent with other causes. He started acting up when his mother left, he started to get bullied at school, he got into fights with the kids who were bullying him, he got hurt. I expect they did too." 

"And all of that is also consistent with child abuse. Did you never think to ask yourself why Mrs Fossen was out of the picture? Did you? No. You didn't. Of course you didn't. You wanted to see how many diagnostic balls you could keep in the air, instead of taking the one action that could have saved him." 

Luka rubbed his forehead. Great, a catfight. Just what they didn't need. They needed an M&M even less, but one was coming their way on both of the Fossens whether they wanted it or not. He decided to intervene. 

"When Ben came in last week with the burn on his hand, there wasn't the evidence to justify taking him from his father." 

Adele turned on him. "What do you want, a t-shirt saying Child Abusers R Us?"

Luka had had enough. He stood up. "You don't break up families" he said hoarsely.

"I should have known better than to listen to you", said Adele. 

"They were father and son -" snapped Luka as he rose from the couch.

"Were! That's right, _were_", raged Adele

"All they had -"

"What's that boy got now?" 

"And we need to respect that -"

"Well his father didn't! He killed his own son!" 

The accusation behind Adele's words hung heavily in the air and silenced all three. Luka tried to be conciliatory and calm things down. Calm all three of them down. Because losing his temper was never a good idea. 

"Look. Ben's teacher brought him in last week. She said he'd had an accident at home. His father was at work, so I got him called. Ben didn't want to be examined. He put up a fight and grabbed Abby - she was helping me. He didn't hurt her. He could have been scared of hospitals. When I managed to calm him down and examine him, I found he had a bruise behind his right ear. Ben said he'd been in a fight at school."

"You believed him?" asked Adele wearily. Legaspi rolled her eyes at the social worker's comment. 

Luka sighed. "He said he got into a lot of trouble at school, fighting, being naughty. Or maybe he was being bullied. It does happen, you know. I called his records up to check, his father arrived and said Ben had been behaving badly since his mother left. That fitted with his aggression. So would being bullied."

"You didn't suspect his father? It does happen, you know", said Adele, dryly. 

"It could have been a lot of things," said Luka, his voice rising. 

Legaspi nodded. "So it could." She adjusted the letter clipped to her board until it was perfectly square. It was the real reason for today's visit to the ER, and she was quite happy to postpone it a little longer. "In my judgement, Ben Fossen's symptoms were consistent with child abuse as well as with a child traumatised by death or divorce and in need of counselling. We had precious little external evidence, and nothing conclusive either way."

"Psych just happened to be in the neighbourhood?" asked Adele bitterly, not appreciating being spoken to as if she were a rehearsal for the M&M. 

Legaspi decided to stare her down, but Adele had a cat at home. 

Haleh put her head round the door a second time. "MVA in five minutes", she announced. The Mexican stand off was broken. Luka offered a prayer of thanks. Adele shook her head. 

"The boy was being abused", she said wearily. "C'mon. How could you not see that? Either of you." She looked at Luka, who was standing with his arms folded, refusing to look at her. So she turned back to Legaspi. 

"And you thought they needed support services. After school activities, father and son groups, parenting classes. That sort of thing."

The bitter sarcasm stung Legaspi. "Have you any idea of the damage it does to a child traumatised by a divorce to be forcibly ripped from their parent who's falsely accused of harming them? I was not going to make things worse for the Fossens."

This time even Legaspi realised she'd put her foot right in it. She leaned back up against the lockers looking like she'd elected to face the firing squad without a blindfold. 

"I should have sent Ben into foster care", said Adele, sadly. "I should have done it on my own authority and instead I let you talk me out of it", she continued, waving her hand at Luka.

"Why?" asked Luka, genuinely mystified. He had had no idea she felt so strongly over this.

"Oh, you can be very persuasive", said Adele bitterly, as her eyes slid over Luka over from head to toe, slowly. "And so Dr Kovac here let Derek Fossen take his son home, where he beat his son's brains out then ate his gun."

"That what happened?" asked Legaspi. Luka nodded. 

"The father was DOA. Pickman thought the boy might have had a faint pulse at the scene, but when I examined him, there was grey matter in his hair. Hard to see for the blood." It had been less than fifteen minutes ago.

Legaspi blew her cheeks out. "Wow", she said. Adele bit her tongue. Legaspi fidgeted with the clipboard. No way she could put this letter business off any longer. Damn. She stood up straight and looked directly at Luka. "You'll let me know the date of the M & M?"

Luka was confused. That was normally done by the head of the Department involved , but he agreed anyway. No point in fighting over details when a child lay dead. 

As Legaspi walked straight past Adele and out of the Lounge, she passed Haleh wearing a yellow plastic trauma gown. 

"Incoming", announced Haleh, by way of ordering Luka to the ambulance bay. 

"OK", said Luka obediently. 

Adele was left in the Lounge, in disbelief. She threw her arms up "That it?" she demanded of the empty room. "That's it? You're telling me that's all there is?"

Back in the viewing room, Adele's words resonated with Mark. He couldn't believe it himself.

How could they have failed to save Ben Fossen? He was just a little boy. Just a scared seven year old who might have been saved, might have been spared, might have grown up normal. Just a little boy. Hadn't Luka had a kid himself or something? How could Luka have screwed up that badly?

Dead at the hands of his monstrous father. Mark had no doubt that Fossen was capable of killing his own child with his bare hands. He'd looked into that bastard's eyes as he lay near to death and Mark had known what he was capable of. 

With his own hands.

"You were saying?" asked Damien. 

Mark shook his head. "Nothing."

Damien looked disappointed. Mark tried reaching out to him. "I don't understand. How is this better for me not being there?"

Damien looked more disappointed. "It's not about 'better' or 'worse' Mark. It's about 'different'."

"And what difference did it make, me not being there?" demanded Mark.

Damien looked even more disappointed, and sneaked a look at the file.

"Don't bother", said Mark wearily. "Fossen ate his gun before he could go on his murder spree, so his other victims are alive, I guess." Mark couldn't control his remembered rage at the threat Fossen had posed to Ella and Elizabeth. He'd been on his way to hijack a taxi to get to them when he'd been shot. He burned up. If Fossen could have thought of killing an innocent baby, no wonder he'd killed his own son. Mark shuddered. With a father like that, who knows what the son would have grown up into, what irreparable damage had already been done. Poor kid had really never had a chance. All that bitterness, hatred and violence passed on to him from his father. Might have been saved. Who was he kidding. The kid was probably better off dead.

Damien looked more disappointed still, and shocked. A little late in the day, Mark wondered whether Damien could read his mind. He told himself that was impossible, and resumed trying to reach out to him.

"But his son's dead. His father killed his own son." Mark counted up. "Five people who would have been dead are now alive; one kid who would have lived is dead; and Adele didn't get paralysed." He laughed bitterly. "I'd certainly call that 'different. " 

"You forgot someone", said Damien.

Mark stared at him. He was never going to forget Fossen. He sighed. "Fossen would have died anyway. So that's not different either."

"No", agreed Damien. He fidgeted for a moment. "Tell me, Mark. How did Fossen die?"

Mark stared at him. He was about to say, _he ate his gun._ Then he realised what Damien meant. 

"You know what he was", said Mark. Suddenly weary as the last of his rage drained out of him, he sulked, "You tell me, was it better or worse it happened this way?" 

Damien smiled angelically, not that he had any choice. "Better or worse for whom, Dr Greene?" 

Propelled by a gentle push in the back from his guide, a dazed Mark shambled alone into the nearby lift. The view out of its glass windows was unchanged, but this time it had no buttons. Its glass doors swished shut, Celine Dion sang, and the lift began its unstoppable descent.

Mark Greene began to scream, uncontrollably.


End file.
